Odd Numbers

by Anne Holt

  A pink album tumbled down onto his knee.

  It felt as heavy as lead.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  “You have to go,” she answered, handing him his jacket. “Now. At once.”

  “Now? This very minute? Right away?”

  The young man looked at Billy T. in surprise and took a tiny step back. He looked the burly figure up and down.

  “Yes,” Billy T. said. “It won’t take long. I just have a few questions.”

  It had not been especially difficult to locate Bernhard Zachariassen. Of all the names on the list of participants at the Friday meetings at Nordtvet, his was the least common. A search on two social media sites had established in less than five minutes that Bernhard Zachariassen worked in the ICA supermarket at the Sandaker center. When Billy T. entered the store, he was stacking packs of cherry tomatoes after the Monday delivery of fresh fruit and vegetables.

  “I’m working,” he said, quite superfluously.

  “Take a short break. A cup of coffee at Baker Samson’s.”

  Billy T. grabbed the boy’s hand and thrust a bill into it. Bernhard glanced at the 500 kroner note before quickly stuffing it into his trouser pocket.

  “Okay,” he said, with a shrug. “Just have to tell somebody first.”

  They walked together to the checkouts.

  “Taking five minutes,” Bernhard mumbled as he passed a buxom woman in a hijab.

  “Take ten,” she said, smiling.

  “What is it you want, in fact?” Bernhard said on the way to the bakery, situated at the opposite end of the small shopping center.

  “You’re a member of ReadAndRun, aren’t you?”

  “No one’s exactly a member there. It’s not actually a club.”

  “Okay then. But you take part in the activities there?”

  “Yes. Sort of. Now and then. It’s free. And they lend out DVDs there as well. Not just books. Kirsten helped me to get this job.”

  He pointed his thumb over his shoulder.

  “That’s great.”

  Billy T. forced a smile and put a comradely hand on Bernhard’s shoulder, before pointing to a table right beside the ATM.

  “What would you like?”

  “Black coffee. And a sandwich, if you’re paying. Cheese and tomato.”

  The boy sat down. Billy T. headed for the counter. The café was almost empty. An elderly man in an electric wheelchair sat at the far end of the premises, pouring something from a hip flask into his coffee. Two young mothers were sitting, each with a baby in her lap, and their strollers blocked his path as he balanced two cups of coffee and a sandwich on his way back to Bernhard.

  “How did it enter your head to start in RAR?” he asked as he put everything down on the table. “You’re not exactly the type to visit a library at any time.”

  Bernhard shrugged and took a huge bite of the sandwich.

  “A guy I know has a sort of spare-time job in there,” he said, his mouth full of food.

  “Andreas Kielland Olsen?”

  The boy stopped chewing for a moment.

  “Uh . . . yes. Do you know him?”

  “Arfan,” Billy T. said, smiling broadly.

  Bernhard returned his smile. A morsel of cheese fell from his mouth and dropped onto the floor without him noticing.

  “That was just a lark, I think. I’d no idea what was going on when he kind of decided to become a Muslim. It didn’t last long, either—I’ve heard he’s called Andreas again now.”

  “When did you hear that?”

  “Over the weekend. Yes. On Saturday. At a party.”

  “Was Andreas there?”

  Bernhard gulped and pulled a wide grin.

  “No, that wouldn’t have looked good.”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Andreas has become so straight. He doesn’t mind coming along to meetings like the one we’re having next Friday, but he hardly drinks. Has a beer, and then drinks water for the rest of the night. Water. Not even a soft drink. That straight act of his meant that I did believe a little in that conversation of his—”

  “Conversion.”

  “Conversion. But not completely. Before that, he didn’t even like them.”

  “Didn’t like who?”

  “The Muslims.”

  He took another mouthful of sandwich. This time a slice of tomato disappeared onto the floor.

  “What do you make of that?” Billy T. asked, stealing a glimpse at his watch.

  The ten minutes were about to run out.

  “Would you like any more?” he asked.

  “A smoothie, if you’re paying.”

  Billy T. went back to the counter. His body felt so full of adrenaline that his hands were shaking when he had to type in his pin code to pay. The strollers were still in his way, so this time he took a circuitous return route.

  “What do you mean he didn’t like Muslims?” he asked in as level-headed a tone as he could manage.

  “Well . . . just the usual.”

  “What is usual?”

  Bernhard shot him a look of annoyance, before taking hold of the plastic glass and sucking out a third of the contents.

  “I don’t know. Just the usual. We read The Satanic Verses in RAR, the one by that guy Salman Rushdie, and then—”

  “What did you say?” Billy T. broke in. “Did you read The Satanic Verses? Is that not a bit . . . heavy?”

  “It’s damn boring. But Andreas really liked it and had picked out loads of quotations that he used to toss into the conversation at random. But then he stopped doing that. A good while ago.”

  Billy T. did not regard it as normal for really young men to quote Salman Rushdie, but he let it lie.

  “I have to go,” Bernhard said. “I get in trouble if I take too long for my break.”

  “Two seconds,” Billy T. said. “Is there anyone else in this group who has become just as straight as Andreas?”

  Bernhard got to his feet with the half-full smoothie in his hand.

  “Linus,” was his forthright reply. “Linus Bakken is his name.”

  “I see.”

  “He and Andreas are the best of friends.”

  Bernhard began to move off.

  Billy T. laid a hand lightly on his chest.

  “One more question,” he said. “What’s the reason you’re in this group? Why do you bother to read The Satanic Verses and meet up in a library?”

  Bernhard pulled a nonchalant face.

  “Kirsten’s okay. She often buys food. Such as next Friday, when she’s going to buy dinner for us all. And then we actually get help, as I said. I’d been unemployed for more than a year when I got this job. And if I’m not to lose it, I have to go now.”

  He squeezed past Billy T. After a few steps, he stopped and turned around.

  “Who are you, actually?”

  Billy T. did not answer. Instead he turned and headed for the multistory parking garage, offering up a silent prayer that his Opel would deign to let him use it one more time.

  The conference room in section R4 was in use again, barely a year after the government complex had been subjected to a terrorist attack in the summer of 2011. It faced Møllergata, away from the explosion, and by opening an old emergency exit as an entrance, the government had fairly speedily regained its usual venue for larger press conferences.

  Now the room was overflowing.

  Fewer than half of those present were from the Norwegian press corps. No fewer than sixteen TV cameras from stations around the world were set up in the room. A host of stills photographers fought to obtain the best spots near the podium, where nine empty chairs were lined up behind a simple and stylish charcoal-gray table.

  The noise level was almost unbearable.

  It was only an hour since the Ministry of Justice had called the press conference, giving time and place and stating that the Prime Minister would be present.

  That was all that the announcement, relayed by the Norwegian News Agency,
had contained. You hardly needed to belong to the ranks of sly foxes in the second row of the audience—the commentators of the capital’s major media outlets—to know that such sudden and unspecific announcements meant as a rule that something dramatic was about to take place.

  Or already had taken place.

  The guesses did the rounds on Twitter, with the journalists present contributing to the speculation on their laptops and smartphones. Most were in agreement that this must be news of who was behind the past week’s two terrorist attacks. Others predicted that it all had to do with Harald Jensen’s resignation. Following Thursday’s bomb attack on the Grønnere Gress restaurant, a north wind had blown from all sides in the direction of the head of the Security Service. He had not had the extremists in his sights before the explosion. Even worse, he and his people were obviously nowhere near being able to identify the guilty afterward.

  The conference should have started ten minutes ago, but the Prime Minister had still not appeared.

  The CNN reporter had a live broadcast set up in one corner, and NRK was struggling to find space for a second camera when the Justice Minister, Roger Michaelsen, abruptly turned up and, with a solemn demeanor and the assistance of four bodyguards, plowed his way forward on to the podium.

  He arrived alone.

  No press spokesperson.

  No undersecretaries or government official to assist.

  Instead of taking a seat on the podium, he walked across to a microphone fixed at standing height, which very few people had noticed. The bodyguards ensured that the distance to the nearest photographers was acceptable, while he fine-tuned the stand.

  “Good morning,” he said tentatively, his mouth overly close to the microphone. “Can you all hear me?”

  A murmur of confirmation was followed by total silence.

  Roger Michaelsen was just less than six foot six, and before his launch into politics, he had been a high jumper at such a prestigious level that, among other things, it had brought him two seasons in the Golden League in the late eighties. He had qualified for the Olympic Games in Seoul in 1988, but a serious thigh injury only two weeks before departure had prevented him from participating. He had accepted the setback, left his athletics career behind, and graduated four years later with a law degree.

  Now he was standing there entirely alone.

  He did not have so much as a rostrum in front of him.

  No script.

  “Welcome,” he said, placing his hands on his back. “First, I have to request that no more photographs are taken from this point on. Film is okay, of course, and if any of you have completely silent cameras, then snap away. I must request that all flash and noise disturbance should cease immediately.”

  It became completely silent in the vast room before he continued: “I will now give an account of a couple of matters connected to the deeply tragic situation in which we find ourselves, following two brutal and senseless attacks on civilians, innocent Norwegian citizens. First of all . . .”

  He clutched the microphone stand and lowered it an inch.

  “. . . the police have received a new video from the group that calls itself the Prophet’s True Ummah.”

  A ripple of whispers ran through the auditorium and then all was silent again.

  “They also assume responsibility for bomb number two. They claim that they are the ones behind the attack on the Grønnere Gress restaurant. The reason this has not been known until now is that the video was sent in the mail.”

  Once again a wave of whispered comments. The Justice Minister stood silent and severe until it had subsided.

  “A memory stick was sent to us in a letter. It is postmarked Friday, but did not arrive at the Ministry until this morning. At present we do not intend to put the contents into the public domain. All we are able to say at present is that the messenger is the same person as on the previous videos. Apart from the one from the Prophet’s Ummah, of course.”

  By now the uproar in the audience was almost deafening.

  “So, we are dealing with two groups, both of which claim to have been responsible for the attack in Grünerløkka,” he went on, with his voice raised a notch. “Something that has naturally to be handled with the greatest seriousness. That a person who is demonstrably dead, and by every indication murdered, still features in these videos opens up a number of speculations. I do not wish to add to these. Far from it.”

  He cleared his throat discreetly. Swallowed. Once again he put his hands to his back and puffed out his chest.

  “We are a nation in crisis,” he said. “We have been attacked by forces we don’t entirely recognize. We have not, despite our exceptionally painful experiences of such a short time ago, succeeded in preventing the same thing from happening again.”

  For a moment, he stood on tiptoe, before dropping back to his heels.

  “There’s a difference between blame and responsibility,” he added. “And the blame for terror always lies with the terrorist. The responsibility, conversely, at the end of the day resides with me. I am the one politically accountable for our state of readiness—for our police force and our Security Service. We have not been good enough. I have not been good enough. That is something far too many families are paying a painful price for today. That is something that both should, and shall, have consequences for me personally.”

  The audience had begun to understand where this was heading. A crescendo of mumbling and frenetic typing on keyboards refused to be restrained by Roger Michaelsen’s increasingly tense facial expression.

  “I have therefore informed the Prime Minister that I wish to resign. She has accepted this. A new Justice Minister will be announced in the course of the afternoon.”

  His voice was about to break.

  “The last thing I want to say is . . .”

  He ran one hand through his hair. There was something vulnerable about the gesture, a motion that comedians had used since the change of government to caricature Roger Michaelsen’s apparent self-satisfaction.

  “. . . sorry. I am extremely unhappy about all the loss of life. About the pain all too many people are having to endure in the wake of two horrible, antidemocratic, and inhumane attacks on our country. I am sorry for the disquiet and anxiety that have been inflicted on us all, as a nation and as individuals. And I would like to say in all humility, thank you.”

  The four bodyguards immediately closed ranks around him.

  To a cacophony of questions, he was escorted from the conference hall to a waiting government limousine—in tears, many later claimed, even though no one managed to capture a single tear on a solitary picture.

  The photograph was grainy and indistinct. Nonetheless, you could see a typically Norwegian landscape around three figures with backpacks, viewed from directly above. Forest, tree stumps, a stream swollen by spring flooding, and the occasional patch of snow on the ground. The hikers had just turned off from a forest path. They followed one another along a track, the first about one hundred feet ahead of the other two, who were walking together.

  “Have the Americans really handed over this kind of satellite photo?” Silje asked, without taking her eyes off the image.

  Håkon Sand shrugged.

  “To tell the truth, we don’t know. It could be one of our own photos. We didn’t have great faith when we asked both the Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to investigate whether there was anything to be found out there. In complete confidence and discretion. This morning, this was sent over from the Prime Minister’s office, with a whole spiel about restrictions on use. It can never be made public, for instance. Not copied, either, and there’s only this one exemplar. And they want it back. Who it was who took this from high up in space is a question you and I will never get answered.”

  “This is pretty sensational,” Silje said, lifting the picture up to her eyes. “If it is them. But we can be far from certain of that.”

  “No. It was taken on the evening of Friday, April 4, just
before it got dark. You can see clearly that the daylight is dwindling.”

  “Friday? Jørgen Fjellstad’s time of death was established as sometime between Saturday and Sunday, was it not?”

  “Yes. But it’s been cold. Colder up there. Below zero, sometimes. That makes the time estimate more difficult to ascertain. The picture was taken only a mile from the spot where he was found. It definitely might be them.”

  “It’s not possible to see their faces.”

  “No. All our people can say, after studying it for several hours, is the following . . .”

  Without invitation, he walked over to the coffee machine and pressed three buttons. It growled a response.

  “First of all, we’re almost certainly talking about three men, not women. They are generally of slim build. It is more difficult to say anything about their height, since it’s just dark enough that there are hardly any shadows cast. The man in front looks as if he’s in better shape than the ones lagging behind. Something about the lengths of his steps, in all probability, but it sounds like sheer speculation to me.”

  He pressed yet another button.

  “Second, they’re carrying heavy loads. That can be deduced from how stooped they are. And third, they’re all wearing headgear, which might quite simply be due to the fact that there was foul weather that evening. None of the hats can be identified more closely, apart from one.”

  He grabbed the cup and returned to Silje.

  “There.” He pointed. “It’s a Carhartt, either blue or black.”

  “Carhartt?”

  “A make of cap that sits on every other head between the ages of ten and twenty-five in this country. Not particularly helpful to find that out, then. Apart from that, it could give some indication that the guy is young.”

  “Well, I’ve often borrowed the children’s hats.”

  “Yes.”

  “And that’s all?”

  Silje looked up at last.

  “No,” he said, pointing at the picture again.

  “Do you see his backpack?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s an eighty-liter Bergans Gaupekollen.”

  “I see.”

  “It went into production in 2007, but was withdrawn from sale just after it became available in stores. There was a fault with the frame. Part of the back plate could easily come loose, and people had found themselves high in the mountains with backpacks that were suddenly impossible to carry on their backs. Everyone who had bought one was offered the money back, on return of the backpack.”